The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer — Volume 1Lever, Charles
General
The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer — Volume 1
Lever, Charles
Fiction
One of my fellow-passengers was a gentleman holding a high official
appointment in the viceregal court, either comptroller of the household,
master of the horse, or something else equally magnificent; however,
whatever the nature of the situation, one thing is certain--one possessed
of more courtly manners, and more polished address, cannot be conceived,
to which he added all the attractions of a very handsome person and a
most prepossessing countenance. The only thing the most scrupulous
critic could possibly detect as faulty in his whole air and bearing, was
a certain ultra refinement and fastidiousness, which in a man of
acknowledged family and connections was somewhat unaccountable, and
certainly unnecessary. The fastidiousness I speak of, extended to
everything round and about him; he never eat of the wrong dish, nor spoke
to the wrong man in his life, and that very consciousness gave him a kind
of horror of chance acquaintances, which made him shrink within himself
from persons in every respect his equals. Those who knew Sir Stewart
Moore, will know I do not exaggerate in either my praise or censure, and
to those who have not had that pleasure, I have only to say, theirs was
the loss, and they must take my word for the facts.
The very antithesis to the person just mentioned, was another passenger
then on board. She, for even in sex they were different--she was a
short, squat, red-faced, vulgar-looking woman, of about fifty, possessed
of a most garrulous tendency, and talking indiscriminately with every one
about her, careless what reception her addresses met with, and quite
indifferent to the many rebuffs she momentarily encountered. To me by
what impulse driven Heaven knows this amorphous piece of womanhood seemed
determined to attach herself. Whether in the smoky and almost
impenetrable recesses of the cabin, or braving the cold and penetrating
rain upon deck, it mattered not, she was ever at my side, and not only
martyring me by the insufferable annoyance of her vulgar loquacity, but
actually, from the appearance of acquaintanceship such constant
association gave rise to, frightening any one else from conversing with
me, and rendering me, ere many hours, a perfect Paria among the
passengers. By not one were we--for, alas, we had become Siamese--so
thoroughly dreaded as by the refined baronet I have mentioned; he
appeared to shrink from our very approach, and avoided us as though we
had the plagues of Egypt about us. I saw this--I felt it deeply, and as
deeply and resolutely I vowed to be revenged, and the time was not long
distant in affording me the opportunity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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